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May 7, 2021
This week’s theme
Well-traveled words

This week’s words
zen
butterfingered
canary
panache
alterity

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

alterity

PRONUNCIATION:
(al-TER-uh-tee)

MEANING:
noun: Otherness: the state or quality of being other or different.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French altérité, from Latin alteritas (otherness), from alter (other). Earliest documented use: 1500.

USAGE:
“We don’t want to get lost because we’d prefer not to see the reality of where we are and so be either appalled by its conformity or thrilled by its alterity.”
Will Self; On Location; New Statesman (London, UK); Apr 4, 2014.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of his tail. -Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (7 May 1861-1941)

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